by Edward Docx
Was there a moment when we became aware of a commotion coming from the river? Perhaps it was gradual. But we seemed to stop our game and look up at one another in unison.
I pressed out my cigarette, slowly, as if this would somehow improve my hearing. A distorted bass, a thudding drum; a voice that did not sing but spat. Kim’s chair faced inwards. She swivelled in her seat, her brown arm crooked over the high back. Tord’s eyes followed her. Raised voices. Cries over the music; crisscross lights in the trees. Lothar put on his hat. I braced myself.
Darkened figures emerged from the river path – arms aloft, their faces obscured by the crazy dance of their torches. We waited in a rigid silence. Only when they entered the range of the comedor’s lights did we see them more clearly. Tribesmen. And the Judge.
He walked at the front like the conductor of a military band. His hair was slicked down and the more unsettling for that. Beside him was an older man with a tattered open shirt and a heavy scarf around his neck. Half a dozen boys danced around them; they were barefoot and wore only shorts with polished-bone necklaces over their bared chests. The raging music came from a massive machine, shouldered by the oldest. He was taller than the others and he wore red lines and some sort of white beading across his cheekbones.
‘Drunk,’ Tord mouthed at Kim as she turned back to face us.
‘Tupki’s son.’ Lothar’s hoarse voice was raised against the music.
Kanari – I hadn’t recognized him with his face painted. And now I realized that the scarf around the older man’s neck was not a scarf but a snake. I had seen this before; some of the villagers kept anacondas as pets to deter the rodents – they drugged them with some kind of root. But this one was big: head and tail, either side of the old man, it writhed slowly, sedated.
The Judge stopped and held up his palm. Kanari turned down the volume. The sudden silence was as shocking as the noise.
Kim stood.
The Judge spoke as though addressing the stage from the footlights. ‘Hello there, my good Christian soldier.’ This to Tord, who now also rose. ‘I see you have come among us with your blessings. How about we all drink to your poor under-achieving God tonight? He’s not done all that well, has he? Not so far.’ He mounted the steps one at a time. ‘We require more wine. And then more music.’ He extended an arm back out into the night. ‘For how do we charm the snakes if not with music and wine?’
Tord’s voice was querulous. ‘What are you doing, sir? What are you doing with these people?’
The Judge paused a moment – affecting to consider Tord anew. Then he started slowly towards our table, his palms before him as if for an aria. And before I could guess his intentions, he had dropped to his knees in front of Kim, clasping her bare legs to his face. The gesture was horribly intimate. She was caught, trapped, frozen by the joke, the seriousness, by a burning embarrassment and alarm. She tried to recoil but she was too strongly grasped to step away without greater force or a kick that she was unwilling yet to risk.
‘Miss Van der Kisten, you are right, you are right: the world has not cared for these men. But see, we are all here debased – the black man, the red man, the white man. Will we ever forgive one another? How many generations does it take?’
‘Sir, let her go!’ Tord’s shout rang out into the trees, his voice powerful, declamatory, a firebrand as he started towards the Judge. ‘You justify yourself in the sight of men, but God knows your heart. For that which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.’
But the Judge – suddenly spry – was off his knees and on his feet in an instant.
‘She is yours.’ He threw his hands out violently then sent them vigorously through his hair so that it stood up in its customary fashion. ‘Be wary of this ridiculous man, Miss Van der Kisten, be wary. His intentions are worse than mine. I want a night. Less. He wants to steal your life and plant his resentful little seed up and down your womb.’
Laughing, the Judge stepped backwards and bowed, ushering Tord and Kim together.
‘I’m fine.’ Kim pulled away from Tord’s arm, fury and embarrassment and repugnance fighting in her face. ‘Let go of me.’
The Judge wheeled his arms. ‘Why is the music quiet?’ He looked about. ‘And get these men a drink. We are desperate. We are all desperate.’
This last was thrown in Felipe’s direction. But he was frozen where he sat, his scissors half-raised as though trying to cut invisible cords in front of his chest.
I stood. ‘You can’t have any more,’ I said. ‘Not here. These are our supplies. And you should take these men back. They’ve had enough. I think we sh—’
‘You.’ The Judge pointed at Felipe. ‘Come with me. I have two cases. Help me fetch them. It’s a matter of honour. We don’t break our promises, Dr Forle.’
‘Felipe,’ I said.
But Felipe had risen. ‘I will stay up here, Doctor, and ensure that there is no damage. Please. It’s no problem. There’s no problem. It’s better if I stay awake here. I will be back in two minutes.’
He did not allow himself to look at me as he stepped down after the Judge.
I turned to where Kim was standing apart from Tord. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
Her face was defiant but beneath I could tell that she was frightened.
‘I am going to bed.’ There was accusation in her voice. ‘We have work to do tomorrow. We can talk about this later.’
She stepped down. Tord made a move to follow but changed his mind or his priorities. Instead, he began to speak to the younger boys at the base of the steps. They stiffened, shocked perhaps at his facility with their language. He gestured and pointed at the old man and the Judge, enunciating his words with a supple-jawed determination that I could not help but admire.
On hearing Tord speak,the Judge had turned and was standing in the half-shadows with Felipe hovering in agonized attendance. His voice seemed to wheel and hiss about the dark walls of the clearing. ‘Press your vile God upon them with bread. Press your God. The old ways are the best ways. Work on the children. The younger the better.’ Then to Felipe: ‘Come on. Let’s fetch the cases.’ He set off, calling over his shoulder, ‘Work on the boys. Work on the boys.’
Tord endured all of this with a clenched and practised Christian fortitude while staying about his task. But the animated conversation had clearly become an argument and he was holding up his hand in an effort to exclude Kanari, who was attempting either to exhort or to mock the younger boys, I could not tell. A minute more and whatever point he had been making seemed to carry. For now he mounted the stairs and collected his pack from where he had neatly placed it out of the way on his arrival.
‘I am taking three boys back to their house,’ he said. ‘They are worried about returning to their father without the beer. Actually, the Judge promised them a case each. I will go with them and try to prevent their being beaten. The others will not come.’
He took out his big yellow torch, checked the light and shouldered his pack. There were many things I did not like about Tord but I saw then that he was a brave man; he travelled alone and he travelled at night.
The others appeared as indifferent to his going as they were to losing some of their number. The old man sat down on the stairs. The two remaining boys followed suit. But Kanari continued to watch me with an animal menace from where he stood – tall and painted and mute.
‘The Matsigenka do not like the river stations.’ Lothar spoke as if reading my mind, his voice calm and all the more unnerving for that. ‘There was slavery here – the mountain empires, then the old world, the rubber barons.’ There was a weariness in his face that I had not seen before as he stood. ‘There is still slavery here – by other names,’ he added, quietly. ‘I’m going to bed. Kim is right. We need to talk again tomorrow. So. Let’s meet first thing in the lab.’
‘I’m going to stay here.’
He stopped. ‘Don’t do anything silly.’ His eyes were steady but there was concern in the tilt of his head.
‘This . . . this registration – or whatever it is – it’s not your concern.’
‘So I’m told. But I don’t live in isolation any more than they do.’ I relented. ‘I have to stay with the bar, Lothar. Otherwise I don’t think there will be a bar by tomorrow morning.’
He nodded – relieved at the triviality of my motives.
‘We meet in the morning,’ he said. ‘This was not good news.’
I watched him go, feeling for the first time a pulse of anger towards him. Perhaps because he had done nothing for Kim, something in me was disappointed. I had thought that he held himself in reserve only so that we might count on him when the moment required.
I crossed to the lounge chairs by the bar. I poured myself what remained of the crushed fruit juice and added the vodka. Long-tailed bats were flying. The older man was sat facing away on the last step. The boys looked up but said nothing.
‘Do you want some water?’ I asked.
The man did not turn around. The boys stared at me: ragged, shuffling, limbs slack with the drinking. I guessed that they could not speak Spanish. I addressed Kanari who was crouching a little way off.
I asked again: ‘Do you want some water?’
He spat and cursed to himself but so that I might hear.
And so we sat: me in the lounge chair, sipping my vodka and guarding my supplies in the lighted circle of the comedor; the four Indians in the semi-darkness on the bare ground beyond. I sought refuge in Felipe’s magazines, which seemed to me then the most spurious things upon the Earth.
III
No more than ten minutes passed before I heard the Judge noisily returning. The Indians stood. Felipe was carrying two cases of beer, bottles clinking as he hurried along behind. I wondered how much of the Judge’s authority was in his bearing and how much in his title. Would men heed him in other places, in other times? Why so?
He indicated that Felipe should set the cases down on the stairs and then clapped his hands.
‘Music, music,’ he called out. The blast was ferocious and instantaneous. Unperturbed, he beckoned up Kanari, who now mounted the steps like a communicant. He pulled out a bottle of beer, held it at arm’s length for Felipe to prise off the cap, and passed it solemnly over. One by one the others followed Kanari, the old man coming last. But even then, the Judge remained at the top of the steps, encouraging them to dance with motions of his hand while Felipe stood stranded at his side.
When at length he turned, I could see that the Judge was speaking to me but I could not make out what he was saying; it was impossible to hear anything above the music. He took the bottle-opener from Felipe and bent down, prising the tops off all the remaining bottles indiscriminately. Then he smiled again in my direction, and offered me one.
I stood. For the first time, I wished for the authority of a weapon: a gun, or better, a knife. The music stormed between us. He offered the bottle a second time and gestured gracefully at the dancing. Then he bowed, placed the beer at the head of the stairs, stepped down and walked away towards his hut, one finger pointing high above his head, over and over, to the throb of the music.
I faltered. Felipe came up and took refuge behind the bar. The dancing was grotesque. I could not tell how much pretence there was in their effort; the two younger boys moved from foot to foot, making pistols with their hands in a parody of gunshots; the older man slapped at his stomach, circling, clutching the neck of his bottle, first raising his head high with his eyes wide to the darkened canopy, then bowing down low to the earth and squeezing them shut. Kanari had put down the music and was pumping one fist then the other as though stabbing at a wall. I thought perhaps they were waiting for the Judge to disappear. I crossed to where he had been standing, indicated the beer and gestured for them to take it.
Already the younger boys were slackening. Only Kanari continued with any conviction – throwing himself into shapes, the sweat pouring across him. I realized with deepening unease that he was showing off. There was something more than adolescence in this display, something intended beyond itself, directed at me, something violent, or something erotic, perhaps, but in a language of movement that I did not understand. He closed his eyes and swayed his head. He seemed to hurl his weight through his body, first one way, then the other; he danced with so much energy that it was as if he had drawn out the souls of the others and that he was all four in one.
I did not see them coming.
I did not hear them.
The first blow was to Kanari’s face – sudden, vicious, a sound like a muffled thud. His head jerked back and away, then forward, his neck flexing like untreated rubber. Blood surged from his nostrils. The bridge of his nose collapsed into a thickened gore and a dark stain burst across his cheeks and flooded his fluttering eyes. His hands covered his face. He went down. The follow-up kick was steel-toed and it cracked at his ribs but even as his boyish body recoiled and his head was thrown up a second time, he did not take the hands from his face.
The music caught, skipped, screamed, then died as one of the soldiers rained rifle-butt blows on the machine.
I was aware that the bottle of beer by my feet was rolling and spilling down the stairs. I was aware that the younger boys were running and the older man too, and that his speed was extraordinary. I was aware that they were all heading for the river path and that they swerved as they went; and I realized with a lurch of understanding that they were expecting gunfire. I was aware, too, that Tupki had arrived from somewhere and that he stood swaying in the silence, hands bound in front of him, half reaching out to his son, his face collapsing – slow and drunk and soundless – into an agonized grimace.
One of the men must have draped the fallen snake around his shoulders. And now Captain Lugo was moving decisively towards him. I assumed in terror that he was going to shoot the father in front of the son. He reached with his free hand for Tupki’s wrists, raised the Indian’s forearms and with them the snake, then he placed the muzzle soft against the sedated sway, paused, and fired into the reptile’s head.
Tupki fell beneath the force of the thrashing body, trying to clutch his ear with his bound hands. Bone and brain and cold blood were spattered all over his face. I willed myself to move but I could not. Adrenalin was coursing through me. I was shuddering – my mouth dry, my eyes blinking, my chest sodden with sweat. There were more lights in the trees.
Lugo indicated father and son. The other men raised them up beneath their arms, dragged them to the foot of the steps and threw them down as if delivering rugs.
‘Tie them,’ Lugo said, then turned his eyes towards me. ‘I need the key to your store.’
Cordero had appeared with more soldiers. The Boy was with him, the metal of his mouth gleaming in the torchlight.
The Colonel nodded curtly towards me. ‘We have spies among us,’ he said. He stood a moment beside Lugo looking down at Tupki and Kanari, his heavy face expressionless, using the beam of his torch though there was light enough to see.
Tupki had his eyes clear of the snake’s entrails but he was visibly shaking, and still trying to reach for his ear. Blood was pooling around Kanari’s head.
Cordero thinned his nose. ‘This should be the end of it. But we will see – tomorrow.’ He looked up at me with no emotion in his eyes. ‘Doctor, can I charge you to make sure these men do not die tonight? Keep them conscious. Treat them at your own hut, please.’ He used the muscles that in other men produced a smile. ‘You’ – this to Felipe still cowering behind me – ‘make sure this mess is cleaned.’
I heard no more. I was pushing through the soldiers at a run.
In the store, I gathered disinfectants, bandages, scissors, painkillers.
Kanari wasn’t moving when I returned. Tupki had shuffled over and was leaning by him saying his name. Cordero had gone. The Boy’s associate, the rat-faced man, held out his hands for the medical equipment.
‘Are you a doctor?’ I asked.
‘No.’ He smiled.
I ignored him and fell to
my knees. I had to wrench Tupki away. His son’s breathing was clogged and wet and made a hideous sucking sound. His mouth was lined with blood and he was only getting the air in with great difficulty. His nose was broken. Teeth were missing; others hanging by strands of gore. I did not know where to begin or what to do beyond the need to clean and swab and to keep his head back so that he might breathe.
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Tupki whispered.
He began to mumble words I did not understand – prayers, I realized – the father wishing every moment of the son’s agony were his own. In my own language, I cursed my uselessness over and over again. Our two voices mingled low, neither heard amidst the thousand calls of the jungle night. The heat crushed down.
IV
I do not know how long we were there clustered on the ground at the foot of the stairs. After Kanari, I cleaned Tupki’s face as best as I could, listening to Felipe creak back and forth on the wooden floor of the comedor doing God knows what. I called him down three or four times but either he did not hear me or he was pretending not to. Eventually, I went up and ordered him to get me water from the kitchen. He came back quickly with one of Sole’s big wooden buckets. But he would not stay and help.
‘Why are you still here?’ The Boy’s associate returned and stood above us. ‘Everyone is coming to eat here now. It’s been a long day – with not much to get hard about.’ He kicked at Kanari. ‘I would get him out of here if I was you, Doctor. Somebody might decide they want a face to stick their dick in after dinner. We like them better without teeth.’
I shouted for Felipe but still he did not come. Panicked, we rose – Tupki and I staggering on either side of Kanari and the three of us bound together like a single animal. I thought somehow to drag father and son to my hut and there gather Lothar and Kim.
Kanari stumbled and swayed, each breath a wet hiss and a low gurgle. I had no sense of Tupki’s condition save for his stopping every few steps to reach for his ear. I had cut the binding from his hands. The remains of the snake were blasted against his neck where my wet rag had not reached and I could feel viscera caked on his forearm where we gripped one another round Kanari’s back.